This self-portrait by Troy Scat portrays the artist smiling, with a gold tooth and gold septum rings, wearing an Elizabethan ruffle collar. Though culturally and temporally discordant, the jewelry, the gold caps, and the ruffle collar exist simultaneously as both fashion statements and overt status symbols. “When I started that painting I was drawing a hoodie,” Scat says, “but then the folds in the hoodie reminded me of those ruffle collars. It was a perfect visual device because I wanted to give the image a kingly feeling, a type of status associated with royalty. The gold tooth is also a Southern thing, so I’m blending these different times and places and cultures.” The image offers a blend of hyper realistic elements and areas that are heavily abstracted, such as the hair. “I’m good at copying things, and all of my work starts from sketching real world references,” Scat says. “But really I’m more aesthetically driven. For example, I’m really big on hair because I’m a fan of shape. Hair is mutable. It allows me to add some type of abstraction or expressionism to my work.” Bringing such disparate elements together within his paintings, Scat creates new images that are not immediately associated with a reductive culture or identity framework. Out of the resulting sense of surprise, a space is created for viewers to bring their own meaning and interpretation to the work, and for new visions of personhood to be imagined for the future.